Why you should be prop betting!!!

I was driving to the gym this morning and I got inspired to write about why prop betting is important and why more people should be doing it. I also said on twitter that if I failed to write this today I would be paying out 1kusd to some lucky retweeter. This is a prop bet (more freeroll) that I will not be losing

What is a prop bet? In the poker world it is considered anything you might side bet on doing against another person. For example, some of the prop bets I've done are playing 50k hands in a day, playing 600k hands in a month. The bets don't always have to be as extreme as those, they can be as simple as you betting another person on who plays more hours that week (I did a bet like this before with some poor soul who did not have a chance )

Why do people prop bet? Some people do it because they see a chance to make a large amount of money assuming they are wiling to take on a good amount of action against. Some people want to challenge themselves. Some people want to try to make a name for themselves.

Okay, now that we got the basics out of the way, lets talk about why prop betting in poker is important for you to consider doing. The number one reason I initially did my first prop bet is because I really enjoyed the challenging of trying to do something that no one else had ever done before. Every prop bet doesn't have to be as dramatic as this but trying to do something where you are actually going to have to bust your ass to do can be an incredibly positive long term choice. If you are able to win the bet, your confidence will be super high and in the future you will feel much better taking on anything. Even when you fail at winning the bet, assuming you worked you ass off and tried your best, you will have a better understanding of what hard work in poker is. The confidence I have gained myself is something that will probably stick with me forever.

The easiest way to get a prop bet started is to come up with an idea and ask your friends what they think about it and if they want to make a small/big wager against. It might be something that you can compete against each other and that way you both push each other. Another way to get action is to post on the poker forum that you frequent and see if anyone is interested in betting against you. You will need set in place rules, a reliable escrow to hold the money, and a judge(s) to handle any problems that might come up for most prop bets. I think coming up with challenges that you and your friends can do is one of the best sources of motivation that exist in poker (outside of someone saying you don't understand the game you frequently play).

If you are at the small/micro stakes level and want to get your name out there, doing something crazy is the best way to do it. I know some people don't play poker to get any sort of recognition and only play for the money but I think most people enjoy being recognized for something. It can be a great way for you to meet new people that might be following along or that play in the same games you do. I met my San Diego roommate (without him I never would have moved to California) during my first prop bet when we started chatting on twoplustwo and then on Skype when we found out we lived close by. Networking like this can be important for your growth as a poker player. It can also be stepping stones to having a podcast that people enjoy watching .

I don't think most of this will be new information for the mid/high stakes guys out there but for the recreational/micro/small stakes guys this should be something you seriously consider doing more of. I think even for the more established players, taking on something very challenging could be what you need to bring back the passion for the game you once had. If anyone has any questions about anything, it could be a prop bet you have in mind or you might need a judge for your prop bet. Feel free to message me here in the comments, private messages or on twitter @joeingram1 or on facebook.

I also have a standing prop bet offer to anyone in the world for any type of PLO volume competition on Pokerstars

Obv a prop bet is becouse is +EV without sacrificing enough of your life, but setting goals should come from within. Trying to show you good at prop bets inflate your ego but will kill your action maybe. You shouldnt have said that lol.

ADZ124: why do people put pictures of their child in stars.. its like please help feed my child im a fish i cant play?

On August 06 2014 17:22 Forrest Gump wrote:
Obv a prop bet is becouse is +EV without sacrificing enough of your life, but setting goals should come from within. Trying to show you good at prop bets inflate your ego but will kill your action maybe. You shouldnt have said that lol.

On August 07 2014 00:52 YoMeR wrote:
heh you don't need to prop bet to discipline yourself. You can do it without putting in 10k action to do so ;P

but hey whatever works for you! Good thing it worked out well for you

In a perfect world where everybody is always motivated to do there best sure I think that is right that goals should come from within. Trying to show you are good at prop bets is a way to inflate your ego sometimes yes, but the other positives that can come from it short term and long term are immense. The confidence you can build by completing one privately or publicly over time is unmeasurable. I probably never make it back from losing most of my money had I not built up the confidence in the past knowing what type of hard work I was capable of putting in. I never really risked much of my own money on any of the bets I've done over time, even if I had failed it still would have worked out well for me, which is one of the points I was trying to make.

On August 07 2014 02:40 Romm3l wrote:
you don't need to but it strongly helps. in game theory parlance it's called "precommitment" and there's nothing like it for getting shit done you otherwise may not do

Exactly, maybe everyone on here is some super human wired the perfect way to do something extreme in any circumstances but 99 percent of the people I have met in my poker life aren't that way at all. Need to meet more LPers

I think the best the way to get more mental power and endurance is pushig your limits with theese stressfull long challenges. But there's no risk of being addicted to it and becoming lazy to do some other things without a monetary/reputation incentive?

ADZ124: why do people put pictures of their child in stars.. its like please help feed my child im a fish i cant play?